Practice room pretty boomy

nicolaad30

New member
Hi to all of you...

Well Straight to the point. I'm having a little problem in my practice room.
When we play, it sound too boomy and and like a cavern. I guess I need to put tome absorbers
but how?. The drums cover all the sound and we barely can hear the guitars; we can't
distinguish one instrument from another. The bass frecuencies are filling the room with too
much power, and even then, it can't be defined.

OK, the room sizes are 100 square metters and 5 metter high.
I don't know if I should put some egg cartons on the walls or something else.

If somebody out there can help me with this, I will apreciate it...thanks
 
Whew! This is a loaded question friend.

The room size is only part of the equation too. The types of materials covering the walls, and what the floor is made out of have something to do with things too. Different materials do different things to the sound.

In bigger rooms, it usually isn't the high frequencies that wind up being the problem. Stuff about 200Hz on down usually wind up being the biggest problem. You describe the room as "boomy" in your thread title, and that would be the characterized sound of a bigger room. It has to do with the fact that a bigger room doesn't cause as much phase cancellation in the lower frequencies as a smaller room would.

Just throwing egg crates up might actually worsen the condition.

How the instruments sound will go farther at helping clear things up in a big room. Having done an extensive amount of live sound mixing, I have exerienced the woes of working in large room. I have experienced the woes of working in very small rooms too. Each has it's own set of problems that can be hard to solve.

A trick is to first work on the two things that you complain about, drums and bass. If your drummer is a heavy hitter, well, that is a problem in most ANY room. In particular, drummers that beat the hell out of their cymbals can be problematic. The drummers ability to compensate will help a lot! But I never hold my breath on THAT! ;) So, a trick is to tune the drums higher than they are. Sharper sounds with more transient attack and less resonance will help the drums sound more defined in a big room. Since it is easier to "excite" the low frequency rumble (which is just the reverb time of the low frequencies) in a large room, getting a little of the mud out of the sound SOURCE helps a lot.

Same with the bass guitar. Cutting out some of the lower mid's in the bass tone can help create the room neccesary for the guitar and vocals to come through.

About a year and a half ago, I approach John Sayers about helping out a little bit with a live venue I was working at. The problem was that the room had some incredibly sucky sound going on, especially in the low mid and midrange. I sent him drawings of the room, complete with how the bands and PA system normally setup. The first thing that he suggested to do was to cover the whole wall that faces the stage with 3" rockwool. The next thing was to build some slot abosorbers along the side walls that would specifically absorb the low mid frequencies. At the time, the club could only afford the rockwool on the front wall. That is what we did, and it was incedible how much that helped in the room. Not only was it easier for me to mix out front, but the bands benefitted a lot from the lack of hard, delayed reflections coming back at them from the front wall. The room still had a problem with some mud between 1KHz and around 400Hz where the audience sat, but this problem was half as bad after the rockwool treatment. The slot absorbers would have been the ticket, but alas, I quit working there, and the owners didn't want to put out the time and modest expense of building them.

Anyway, the rockwool treatment on a 13'X30' wall was around $450 US. Not cheap, but not totally expensive either. The money was well spent and totally worth it for the benefits it had!

Try tuning the drums a little higher, getting the bass player to play with some more midrange in his tone, and get the bass player to stand farther away from his amp. Of course, having the drummer and bass player play at a lower volume will help too! But somehow, I doubt that is going to happen. :) Also, if you guys are set up along a wall, or in a corner, try setting up in the middle of the room. Corners in a room tend to build up low frequencies and standing around them of course is not so desireable.

Throwing up egg crates, or putting carpet on the walls, etc...all tend to just absorb high frequencies. That is ALL it does. That type of solution will do little to help in this case. It will just make the room more dead sounding in the high end. Maybe the room could use a LITTLE absorption in the high frequencies, but unless you are having problems with high freq feedback on the vocalists mic, that is probably not the problem you want to solve.

Good luck.

Ed
 
if your only using 10 or 15 watt amps you won't hear anything over the drums either.
Although that is quite a large room your in. I wish my band could find a room with that much space!
 
Actually we are ussing good amps, but I wanted to know what to put on the walls or corners,ettc. that could absorb the mid-low frecuencies. Those are the ones freaking me out...

This is the place:
 

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yikes! Get those amps out of the corners!!! NOTHING good in sound is going to come of that. That would explain a lot about the sound you are describing. You are doing nothing but accentuating the low mids with them where they are.

Ed
 
Yep, pull them away from the wall and put them up on milk crates or something. If you can score some couches to put in the corners they will help a bit.

Check out the Studio Building forum for info on Bass Traps and Panel Absorbers.
 
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